But seriously, the latitude is very beneficial for rendering skin tones. It's also helpful in those tricky lighting situations which may have specular highlights that you want to rein in. It's also great for just winging it and metering a bit sloppy e.g. when the subject is changing too quickly to fuss over each zone.

If you want to shoot a gray wall, well then, every technology will do well and you can go even with digital.

But, if you want to capture the natural light when it's at its best, the only way to go may be (neg) film. For example, a forest, where sunlight comes as millions of tiny rays. I have yet to see a digital image capable of reproducing these kind of lightning conditions.

Although being quite rare situations, they are the most beautiful and very sad to miss due to technology.

It's also great for just winging it and metering a bit sloppy e.g. when the subject is changing too quickly to fuss over each zone.

Being able to simply wing it is one of the things I like best.

Bought a Holga about a month ago and I've had great luck using 400nc; from full bright sun on the salt flats of Death Valley to inside a restaurant at mid-day. The restaurant shot was the hardest stretch for that film/camera combo. In all the shots I've done so far there are no blown highlights that have mattered.

I'm truly tempted to just use 800 ISO films in the Holga and super glue the exposure setting in cloudy.

Mark Barendt, Beaverton, OR

"We do not see things the way they are. We see things the way we are." Anaïs Nin

You can use it in high contrast lighting situations. Color negative film will still produce decent results in situations that would call for N-2 development of most black and white films. But in general, try not to use the extra latitude. Proper exposure is still needed for excellent results. One of the nicest things about color negative film is that it is forgiving of the many minor oversights a careless person like me makes.

You can use it in high contrast lighting situations. Color negative film will still produce decent results in situations that would call for N-2 development of most black and white films. But in general, try not to use the extra latitude. Proper exposure is still needed for excellent results. One of the nicest things about color negative film is that it is forgiving of the many minor oversights a careless person like me makes.

Exactly, 'exposure latitude' should be called 'highlight-exposure latitude'.

If you want to shoot a gray wall, well then, every technology will do well and you can go even with digital.

But, if you want to capture the natural light when it's at its best, the only way to go may be (neg) film. For example, a forest, where sunlight comes as millions of tiny rays. I have yet to see a digital image capable of reproducing these kind of lightning conditions.

Although being quite rare situations, they are the most beautiful and very sad to miss due to technology.

Then I would propose 'youre doing it wrong'.

Originally Posted by RalphLambrecht

Exactly, 'exposure latitude' should be called 'highlight-exposure latitude'.

In standard processing, in my home process, it only has underexposure latitude, with 2 stops under being best, 1 stop over is there and scannable but is dense and has a thin density range that needs stretching out.

In standard processing, in my home process, it only has underexposure latitude, with 2 stops under being best, 1 stop over is there and scannable but is dense and has a thin density range that needs stretching out.

Point is, its all in the processing

Point is: it's all in the definition of 'minimum exposure'. One must define what the minimum shadow density should be. For someone like me, it's relatively high, because I like lots of shadow detail (landscape). For others, it does not matter much as long as they get any picture at all (news, forensics, etc). Landscape photographers usually rate their films up to 2/3 stops below box speed. To me, XP2 is no different, but standard C41 processing gives it a rather low average gradient. Hence, the exposure latitude towards the highlights and none towards the shadows.